I saw the same homeless man in Starbucks this morning.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s always there when I grade before school.<\/p>\n
His beard belonged to Bob Marley;<\/p>\n
his glasses very Buddy Holly.<\/p>\n
He drank coffee at 5:30 a.m. and surfed his stickered laptop.<\/p>\n
I think it was Facebook.<\/p>\n
\u201cReading the news,\u201d I asked, as I went for a newspaper.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t read the news. Nothing in there affects me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about global warming?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hell with that!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about in 50 years?\u201d (I really said that.)<\/p>\n
\u201cWarming\u2019s good for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
I glanced at the newspaper\u2019s headline: something grim about jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to go to work,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a four letter word.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
I took my coffee to the truck and drove to school.<\/p>\n
The shell sign blasted light into the sky,<\/p>\n
murdering the Big Dipper.<\/p>\n
Queen played on the radio. Crazy Little Thing Called Love.<\/p>\n
A rusted bike lay splayed in the gravel. No one would ride it again.<\/p>\n
The reader board wished happy birthday<\/i> in red and blue.<\/p>\n
The mole living under the parking lot<\/p>\n
somehow pushed dirt up through the asphalt.<\/p>\n
The black school cat prowled the portables.<\/p>\n
Sea lions barked down on the Bayfront.<\/p>\n
Dogs at the shelter barked, too.<\/p>\n
I beat the head custodian again,<\/p>\n
he\u2019s dying from Agent Orange.<\/p>\n
My students wrote well on the disappearance of stars.<\/p>\n
Later, we\u2019ll walk to the cemetery and write about the dead.<\/p>\n\n
I saw the same homeless man in Starbucks this morning. He\u2019s always there when I grade before school. His beard belonged to Bob Marley; his glasses very Buddy Holly. He drank coffee at 5:30 a.m. and surfed his stickered laptop. I think it was Facebook. \u201cReading the news,\u201d I asked, as I went for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4308,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42],"tags":[190,421,88],"class_list":["post-4307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","tag-oregon-poetry","tag-poem","tag-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4307"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4310,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4307\/revisions\/4310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}